Christina Romer Calls For Regime Change

Christina Romer Calls For Regime Change

Christina Romer Calls For Regime Change

WASHINGTON - JULY 14: Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer participates in an announcement about the Recovery Act in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building July 14, 2010 in Washington, DC.

What we learned from the Temin and Wigmore paper is that one way out of a recession at the zero lower bound is by changing expectations. To do that, often what is needed is a very strong change in policy – something economists call a “regime shift”. The most effective way to shake an economy out of a terrible downturn when we’re at the zero lower bound is an aggressive change in policy that makes people wake up, say “this is a new day” and change their expectations. What the Fed has done since early 2009 is much more of an incremental change.

I think that what the Fed needs instead is a regime shift. A number of economists have suggested that the Fed adopt a new framework for monetary policy, like targeting a path for nominal GDP. If the Fed adopted such a nominal GDP target, they would start in some normal year before the crisis and say nominal GDP should have grown at a steady rate since then. Compared with that baseline, nominal GDP is dramatically lower today. Pledging to get back to the pre-crisis path for nominal GDP would commit the Fed to much more aggressive policy – perhaps more quantitative easing and deliberate actions to talk down the dollar. Such a strong change in the policy framework could have a dramatic effect on expectations, and hence on the behavior of consumers and businesses.

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There are lesser things you could do that might also help, but the point is that to have a robust recovery we need to want a robust recovery. The problem, I think, is that at this point if the Fed were to take dramatic effective action that would serve to highlight how much suffering has been caused by their failure to take dramatic action earlier. Their incentive is to insist on muddling through so as to make it seem as if we live in the best of all possible worlds.